Future Visual Effects

draft

This post will evolve over the next week.

The question of the moment is this: if you could guess how visual effects will evolve over the next 5 years, what would you guess? Ones answer could be about technology, or about the business, or the creative vision of the project or about any aspect of the field.

I have asked several friends to weigh in here. Feel free to send me email or leave a comment here with your thoughts.
 
As an example of something that I was surprised about has been the vast volume of visual effects done with computers. Producers have been able to save money on otherwise useless writers, often saving several hundreds of thousands of dollars by merely adding another 10 or 20 million dollars of pointless visual effects. The scope of work is breathtaking.
 
I will kick this off with two fairly obvious ones:
 
1. The various efx palaces will push forward on the photorealistic human character, an area where great progress has already been made. A pandora's box of silliness will result from this, more than we already see.

2. AI/Machine Learning will be applied rigorously to all areas of the production pipeline both to create new techniques (e.g. deducing 3D motion from footage) but also to help reduce the work load of these vast projects. Expect literally hundreds of examples of this over the next few years. Technical footnote: the big players have all the advantages here, as we often find. The reason in this case is that they have the data, or can generate the data on their next big project or two. And Machine Learning is heavily dependent on having a lot of training data.


to be continued.

Comments on the Visual Effects Bake Off 2017

This post collects a review from Joseph Goldstone of the Bakeoff Screening and my response from Facebook. Neither Joseph nor myself are members of the Academy Visual Effects branch, although Joseph does a lot of work for the Academy and will no doubt be a member one day in my estimation.

Joseph knows Rob Legato from Digital Domain and I know him from Robert Abel and Associates. Thus Rob represents a homeboy and local favorite to us.  Rob is visual effects supervisor on Jungle Book.

Joseph Goldstone writes:

I was unprepared for how good Jungle Book was; the creation of a virtual environment and the interactive lighting was just extraordinary. Rob Legato consistently pushes the state of the art, about once every half-dozen years.

Passengers was another surprise; it's one of the few features I would actually WANT to see in 3D, given the design of that colony ship.

But the big surprise was how convincing the effects were for Deepwater Horizon. I was completely gripped.

If I were looking for another high point I might pick Peter Cushing's synthesized performance in Rogue One, which I found much more impressive than their one-shot of a young Carrie Fisher.

The BFG just left me cold. As for Captain America: Civil War, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Doctor Strange, and Arrival, the execution was superb, but (except perhaps for the astonishing visual weirdness of Dr. Strange, as if Escher was a moviemaker) the content was not novel. Kubo and the Two Strings is beautiful, and might make the final four just because there's something about the level of investment that stop-motion animators make over two solid years of knocking out 3 seconds a week that just shows tremendous heart. It showed last, which is the best place to be when you're asking for a sympathy vote.

Talking and singing animals are really not my thing, but damned if I wouldn't give my top-rank vote to Jungle Book, based on it having pushed the envelope harder than anything else.

As always, the VFX branch acts as a filter for quality and novelty of the work itself, and then the general membership undoes that by voting for cuteness. Sorry, I will never forgive the general membership giving the award to Babe and passing up Apollo 13. Never.

Global Wahrman replies:

Regarding Apollo 13 and Babe, I remember being struck by that award as well. When I saw Apollo 13 I was amazed at how seamless it was and that it might present a problem when the awards came because the general membership might not realize they were seeing visual effects. I was approached for Babe but could not take it at the time (big mistake I suppose, although I think Scott definitely did a better job than I would have).

I think that the issue with Dr. Strange was that neither you nor I are fans of the comic and that if we were we might be more impressed with the imagery. I loved the Cloak of Levitation, best part of the movie for me.

As for Arrival, I could not get beyond the fact that an alien invasion movie *must* contain more gunfights, car chases and Jeff Goldblum. I am joking.

Generally stop motion does not do well at this level because there are so few stop motion people in the visual effects subsection.

I did not understand why Capt America Civil War was even on the list, unless they felt they had to pad it. Yes, there was a lot of it. Yawn.

It is odd how movies show at this screening. The year of Cast Away I was shocked at how good that showed at the screening. And how badly, for example, Gladiator did, even though Gladiator was obviously a really interesting film. If you get the chance, read the NY Times Magazine article on Deepwater Horizon, it is a great, great story. I would not be surprised if the movie was not based on that article.

As for Rob Legato, I know him from Abel's and one night he was working on an Eastern Airlines commercial on camera 2 all by himself in the middle of the night. The man deserves the best just for enduring that. Ive only seen bits and pieces of Jungle Book, but it looked great. It should be the winner.

Cushing vs Leia, in terms of impact, I am told that Leia wins hand down. This is perhaps because that movie is so grim that it needed an upbeat moment. We can not separate the visual effects from the emotion and content of the film, much as some would like.

At the end of the day (or in this case, a very long night), the problem with the visual effects bakeoff is that they only show visual effects films. (sarcasm alert) I was disappointed that Independence Day Resurgence was not there. Was there another movie this year as stupid as that? How about a fight between giant robots? Is visual effects losing its touch with the common filmgoer?

Five Hours of Hell

draft

The Visual Effects Bakeoff will take place this year at the usual place (La Peer and Wilshire) on January 7, 2017 from 5:30 PM - until 10:30 PM.

Whenever possible, I recommend sitting on an aisle seat so it is easier to escape between films and chill out in the lobby. This is one advantage that the non-members have.

The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

Alice through the Looking Glass

Arrival

The BFG

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Captain America: Civil War

Deadpool

Deepwater Horizon

Doctor Strange

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Independence Day: Resurgence

The Jungle Book

Kubo and the Two Strings

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Passengers

Rogue One

Star Trek Beyond

Suicide Squad

Sully

Warcraft

X-Men: Apocalypse

I have never really understood the rules here.

I have no idea what films will be selected, but here are some guesses. I suspect that Dawn of Justice, Captain America, Dr. Strange, Rogue One, X-Men and Jungle Book will be selected. I think they nominate 10 films for consideration. Deadpool is interesting and might be selected. I predict Suicide Squad and Independence Day will not be nominated.

As usual, the Academy members are separated from the unwashed masses by the Academy SS (Screening Service) personnel. If you are not a member and you wish to hobnob with your elite friends, you need to be there early. How early is of course anyone's guess but since the US Government worked so hard to send American jobs overseas in order to destroy the middle class and elevate and exalt the rich, there has usually been no problem getting in. I would say about an hour early is a safe bet, say 4:30 pm.

If you are going to attend, it is best to wear all black and leave your sidearms at home, there is no recording, whistling, spitting, or throwing of items of any sort. Those who are ejected from the theatre are never seen again.

The "Rhetoric of the Introduction" at the VFX Bakeoff

This is my report on the Academy VFX Bakeoff.  This year I was accompanied by Jon Snoddy and his friend Allison.  Their presence kept me in my seat for the whole affair, one of the first times that has ever happened.

Here are some notes.

A. Male to Female Ratio

Between Pam Hogarth, Rhonda Gunter, Phoebe Zerouni and the afore-mentioned Allison, all of whom sat close to each other, they substantially affected the M to F ratio at this screening.   I know that Nancy St. John and at least one other woman was also there in the audience, somewhere.  Yes, VFX is still nearly completely male.

B. Elitism

This is the first year that the subsection members had their own private reception, eliminating any unnecessary contact with people in the field who are not part of their group. 

C. Rhetoric

I paid particular attention this year to the rhetoric of the 3-5 minute introduction of each film. I have always noticed a pattern in the past but this year it became completely clear in my mind, probably because I was willing to listen to all 10 introductions (in the past I have gotten bored and gone to the lobby).

The structure seems to be this: (a) express humble gratitude that their film was worthy of consideration, (b) describe the genius and vision of the director and producer of the film and acknowledge that all ideas came from them, without them, there would be no visual effects nor any ideas of merit, (c) state the total number of shots and any special constraints such as deadline, (d) then, with the deadline and total shots in mind, discuss elements of the film that are featured in the effects reel that they believe gives them the best shot at being nominated. If they needed 43 special versions of the stupid talking dog, 3 of them physical, discuss this. If they had to put up 53 projectors in a helix or some other weirdness, mention it.   (e)  acknowledge the facilities that worked on the project, so they don't all kill you later. (f)  make a special last ditch desperate appeal for sympathy because of some horrible thing that happened during production that only other visual effects professionals will relate to (g) ignore the red light, (h) conclude that you really ought to have the nomination because of the brilliance and stamina demonstrated by this reel, and (i)  thank the audience and beg for votes.

D. Projection and Stereo

All films were projected digitally. Three were stereo, seven were flat. The Dolby 3D system was used.

E. Sound

The sound was not excessive this year, and there were less explosions over all.  This turns out to be a mistake.  The subsection has an apparent weakness for and love of the tradition of gratuitous loud noises as demonstrated by the nomination of Iron Man 3.

F. Scope of Work

Many of the films screened claimed to have 1600-1800 shots in their movie. A small effects film might have a mere 700-800 shots. Recall that Star Wars had approximately 300+ shots. The amount of work this represents is amazing.   Some people believe that there is an inverse relationship between the number of shots and the quality of the story.

G. The Year of Albert or Alfred or Something

More than any other year I can remember, the name of the renderer was dropped, and it was "Albert" / Alfred / Whatever. I doubt most of the people on stage would recognize a renderer if they tripped over one.  I believe that the choice of renderer is just as important to the quality of the visual effects as the choice of film stock is to a brilliant photographer: both very important and not important at all.

H. Water, Water Everywhere

But Pacific Rim's water looked much better than everyone else's. Go, ILM.

I. Its not the Effects that Stinks, its the Movie

Iron Man 3 was the canonical, too-stupid-to-live, visual effects for morons sort of movie. Come on everybody, lets hold hands because we can defeat gravity that way ! Well, you wont defeat Gravity or gravity, either one.   But it will get you nominated. 

J. Gravity... the triumph of Lights in Space

Did they composite, or did they rerender the face, only her effects company will know for sure.

K. Best Introduction

John Knoll's for Pacific Rim. Informative, interesting about scale, and within the time limit specified.

L. Dragons

Dragons are difficult and WETA's dragon was acceptable. I think people are confusing visual effects with animation. As an animated dragon it was fine, as a real visual effects dragon, not so much.

M. The Movie vs The Effects Reel

Gravity may be the classic case of where the movie is much more interesting than the effects reel.   The counter example for me was the case of Pearl Harbor, there the effects reel was better than the movie.

N. The Lone Ranger was out by itself

All by itself, The Lone Ranger maintained the traditions of models and physical effects.   The Subsection recognized their efforts with a nomination.   However, I can not understand nor forgive the travesty of the musical interpretation of Rossini's great finale.  Some things can not be randomly fucked with, even in Hollywood.

O.  The Nominees Are ...

Gravity,  Hobbitt/Smaug, Lone Ranger, Iron Man 3, Star Trek.

I will do a post on why I think this is weird.

Comments on the VES "State of the Global VFX Industry" White Paper Part 1

(this is a draft and is in progress... send comments to michael.wahrman@gmail.com or leave a comment below).

The Visual Effects Society issued a report on the global visual effects industry right before SIGGRAPH 2013. I have been meaning to review this report for Global Wahrman for some time, but I have not because I did not understand it.

Its not that the report is unclear or badly written, it is in fact very well written in some ways. The problem for me was that I could not figure out what it was trying to accomplish or for whom it was intended. In particular, I could not figure out what its point of view was.

So now I have read it several times, and I think that I have the answer to my questions. It is studiously trying not to have a point of view, to be all things to all people, as it were. But to paraphrase Frederick the Great, he who defends everything defends nothing. And that is what I think we have here, a report that does mention many of the issues and many of the proposed solutions, and asks some of the right questions, but not all of course, but ultimately leaves us where we were before. Which is nowhere.

You are going to have to look up the report for yourself. Right now, Google Chrome is not letting me get the URL here for the report. Search for "VES global vfx industry report" and it should come right up.

As I understand it, this report was initiated because in light of recent events, particularly the demise of Rhythm and Hues in the aftermath of Life of Pi, the VES felt that it had to do something, anything, to respond to the dismal situations of so much unemployment, uncertainty and so forth. So they assembled a group of worthies in the industry (leaving out many who could equally be there) but certainly including a group of people who I would want involved in such a report. Nancy St. John, Mike Fink, John Nelson, Scott Squires, Bill Taylor, Peter Chiang, Ray Feeeney, Warren Franklyn, Sari Gennis and so forth. All of these people are worth listening to, that goes without saying. I felt that it was a little light on the VFX workers (e.g. digital artists) themselves, but whatever.  There was one token technologist that I noticed.

Ok, yes, there are some things I could quibble with. Did I see a mention of ageism?  I dont think I did, but hey maybe I missed it. I felt that the issue of proprietary software needed expansion, the situation is an icky one and one is kind of screwed either way (damned if you write your own software, damned if you don't). I felt that the section of what describes "the business model is broken" could be greatly expanded and frankly it would be a very dark part of the report.  IMHO the so called business model never really ever worked.  Two of the biggest problems that I see in visual effects, the fierce competitiveness between facilities and between individuals that leads to things such as underbidding a project to put a facility out of business and the character assassination that is an everyday occurrence are not mentioned that I noticed.

But I think that the problem here with this report is actually structural with the VES.  In other words, the same problem that the report has the VES has.  Arguably.  The VES does not want to say "end subsidies" because there are lots of international people out there who like subsidies (of course) even though subsidies are the number one cause of the demise of a dozen worthwhile visual effects firms in this country.  Thats pretty darn politic of them, an outsider might say, or one might use the word spineless as well.  The VES does not want to complain about facilities making people move all over the planet then laying people off, because they are also trying to represent the interests of the facilities. Somehow the VES does not see recent events as a complete disaster (the laying off of not less than 1000 people in the west coast in the last year by my estimates). Somehow the demise of the Los Angeles visual effects community is not a cause for concern (which it may not be).  The VES does not want to take a position on the massive oversupply of artists (quote end quote) but until that is dealt with no one but the facility owners or studio executives are likely to have a secure job in this field, except that these two groups don't have secure jobs either.

Subsidies? What subsidies?

Before I get into some specific suggestions, I want to pose to you the following question: is visual effects a reasonable career for a young person (or any person) to get into? Is it likely that they will have a career that lets them do such things as have a family, have a life, build a retirement fund, all those boring things that become so important as you grow older and do not have a trust fund. Is it? Is it a reasonable career? I want to suggest to you that it is not, except for a privileged few and that is the fundamental dilemma here.   To be specific, I am saying that visual effects is not a reasonable career for a person to have and that people are being duplicitous and unethical by encouraging people to go into it.   I have written much more on this topic, you can find the posts on my blog if you care to look. 

So here are some specific suggestions, some of these may be redundant to the report, but it doesn't matter. I am sure I am going to be ignored anyway.

1. Finally put together a matrix of positions / skills in visual effects to try to bring some order out of chaos of who does what and what you need to be qualified for it.  

2. Issue a strong statement about a union, I think that visual effects should have one in order to represent the interests of the workers of the USA in visual effects. An organization that can ask why their elected representatives have sat on their hands and looked dumb while thousands of jobs left S. Cal without worrying about whether it annoys the studios. Of course it annoys the studios.  (By the way, why did our representatives sit on their hands while thousands were unemployed and have to leave the county?  It must have affected their tax base.  It couldn't be slavish obedience to the studios, now could it?)

3. Issue white papers whose purpose is to educate clients on fundamental principles. A fundamental principle might be to explain why changes late in the day might be easy, or it might be very hard and explain why.  I doubt it will do much good but 1 in 100 producers actually wants to do a good job and not just fuck people to make a dollar, and so that 1 person will benefit.

4. Help create a professional development path (paths) for people in the field. This is what they should be learning, doing, whatever if they want to progress in the field and be better professionals.  Instead of just saying every person for themselves, yahoo, go say you're an effects supervisor, no one will know the difference anyway.

5. Help create a way for out of work individuals to have access to the tools they need to stay current. Without the tools, they can not practice and their skills will get both rusty and out of date and then they are completely, as the French say, es fucque.

6. Take a strong position on subsidies.  Subsidies destroyed employment in Los Angeles where a huge number of your workers have/had lives.   Sure LA may be a sucking sewer of smog and corruption, but it is *our* sucking sewer and we should defend it.

7. Finally I think that one of the largest problems visual effects has is that everyone tries to be like everyone else.  As long as they do that they will be treated like the commodity that they are.   Only by creating their own vision as artists will they be unique and be able to command a better price, or so I argue.  We do see a little bit of that in this field, but I think we should see a lot more.

I will elaborate on all of these in future posts.

I want to thank the people who took the time to write the report. No, its not what I would ideally want, but it may be the best the VES can do, given the various interests they have to accommodate, and it certainly was a lot of work and I certainly appreciate it.

Joan Collins and Kelley Ray on Starship Troopers

These are my friends Joan Collins and Kelley Ray who were at the time representing SONY Imageworks on Starship Troopers at MASS.ILLUSION in Lenox, MA.

Not only had MASS.ILLUSION collected a fabulous crew doing great work, it was in a drop dead gorgeous part of the world.

I was only on one small part of the project, but it was one of the most enjoyable projects I have ever had.  For another post on this complicated production, see here.  This production was a classic of the situation where a production can be rocky but individuals, in this case me, can have a wonderful time.

Kelley is now efx supervisor on an episodic show called Vampire Diaries, and I don't know what Joan is doing, but last I heard she had several films that were about to start.

Before Joan left Lenox the last time, I bought her dinner and tried to talk her into doing some project with me, I think.  I still remember the restaurant in Lenox, MA.

This must have been about 1997.

Vampire Diaries on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1405406/

The Fate of Giant Robots in Cinema

[in progress 7/1/2013]

There is some real content here: and it is the following.  First, that Pacific Rim is an example of a video game character / voice makes the transition from games to film.  In this case, its the voice of the computer in Portal and it is also the voice of the computer in the giant robot, I think.  It is usually the other way around (e.g. from movie to game).   Second, that water in visual effects is hard, very hard.  And big water, e.g. water that is scaled up is even harder.  I don't care how fast your computers are, although that helps, it is a very tough problem for reasons we can go into later.  Third, the plot device of the "neural bridge" has amusing psychosexual implications, I hope they make good use of it.  Fourth, its been a long time since we destroyed Tokyo in cinema, I hope the filmmakers are up to the task.

__________

Minor Spoiler Alert, but nothing you would not learn from any trailer.

__________

The very future of Giant Robots, the apex of sophistication of all cinematic art, is at risk.

This important subgenre, pioneered by the Japanese and others in the far east, was created and nurtured in the field of Anime. But then it jumped out of that subgenre and into the world of mainstream filmmaking through the genius of Michael Bay, that underrated director of robotic conflict, whose Transformers can be said to have changed the very face of the cinema, transforming, as it were, the worn and old-fashioned ideas of story, character, mere plot and nuance into a vigorous and renewed art form of the clash of giant robot on giant robot.

Whereas previous narrative was limited to "person vs nature", "nature vs nature" and so forth, we can now add "robot vs robot" and "robot vs alien" greatly expanding the range of narrative possibilities.

No more weak cop buddy movies for Hollywood, or High Noon in space, or a repeat of Halloween XIII, all were swept away by the magnificence of the Transformers films. But as geniuses are wont to do, Michael Bay became bored with the genre he had helped to create and lost his way. And the genre of giant robots itself fell into decay, fallen from its former glory.

Now the entire field of Giant Robots in the hands of a tyro, a beginner to the art form, Guillermo del Toro, who is an esteemed but imperfect filmmaker. His first Hellboy was a triumph, and so were some of his earlier low budget films to a varying degree, but Hellboy II was a disappointment for reasons that were entirely under his command.  He recouped some ground with Labyrinth of Pan, but one could hardly call Labyrinth a giant blockbuster hit and, as we all know so well, in American all that really matters is money.

Thus the fate of this important genre may ride on the box office performance of Pacific Rim. Hollywood being what it is, were Pacific Rim not a "monster" at the box office, and failed, it would impose a chill on the financing of other giant robot projects, no matter how worthy. That is the normal craven behavior of Hollywood and is just a fact of our lives.

The premise of Pacific Rim is sophisticated and rich in nuance. Giant aliens menace the earth from under the seas, not from outer space, and proceed to destroy civilization and small children while we are powerless to stop them. Perhaps we have a homage here to Godzilla, even though of course Godzilla was not an alien, but an earth creature mutated into its cinematic form through the plot device of nuclear mutations. So the first thing we know is that the plot premise "aliens attack and try to destroy earth" is totally original.

From out of the alien rift comes this aquatic menace to destroy Tokyo

The second important element of Pacific Rim is that all our weapons fail to stop this menace, and we are reduced to one last chance, one last resort, a vintage, early-model Jaeger, which is a giant robotic device controlled by not one, but two, humans in concert.

Is there any science in this fiction? Well, there might be. It is generally believed by those who study such things that a large part of the brain mass of different creatures is proportional to the size of the creature. In other words, whether or not an elephant or a gorilla is intelligent (which they certainly are), a certain amount of their very large brains is used up by the sheer mechanics of controlling their large bodies. The larger the body, the larger the brain, so this argument goes.

The two buddy giant robot controller team

Thus in Pacific Rim, we need not one, but two, humans whose combined brain mass, roughly divided left and right, is necessary to control the Jaeger in its sophisticated war against the sea aliens. The two humans are brought together in "neural fusion" which is a privacy destroying mechanism in which all their dreams, mistakes, fears, emotions and memories are fused. Anyone who agreed to neural fusion must be a very brave person indeed, who would want to be fused with their girl or boy friend? You would break up at once.

The incredibly hot Japanese martial artist teenage lust object robot controller

So through this plot device we actually have a nice undercurrent of sex/relationship politics. Do we have two beefy guys in a homosexual neural fusion, or do we go the heterosexual route, particularly with a hot oriental martial arts master. We do go the heterosexual route, indeed, and it could be fun. Will the neurally fused couple be able to stay together long enough to beat up the giant sea aliens, or will their relationship break apart, will they start throwing things at each other instead of the deadly Kaifu, leading to the defeat of all humanity?

For those of you who are interested in mere visual effects, there are a number of interesting challenges to this film and they generally have the word "water" in them, lots of water.  Water in scale.  Very hard to do.  Very expensive, very annoying.

Pacific Rim has another first to the best of my knowledge.  A voice character from video games has made the transition to feature films.  You may recognize the voice of "Portal" in key places in Pacific Rim as the voice of (what I think is) the computer that helps manage the Jaegers.  If you listen carefully near the beginning of this trailer, you will hear a very recognizable voice say "Pilot to Pilot connection: engaged".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6irOTZ0WskU#at=16

So much is riding on this one film, I hope Guillermo doesn't "fuck it up" as they say.

_______________________________________

Pacific Rim on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/

Anomalous Stingray Feeding Behavior and Its Relationship to the VFX Industry

I have been observing the Visual Effects "industry" and the behavior of people in that industry since about 1980. I am constantly amazed by the sense of sharing, the love, the collaboration, the farsightedness, wisdom and sheer intelligence of people in this industry.

Well, actually, no I haven't.

In fact, I have noticed what seems to be the reverse: a thuggish, callous, stupid, fuck-you-I-got-mine sensibility that pervades the industry like the smell of rotting garbage in August. To those from the NY area, who will understand the reference, I tell them that I suspect that people in New Jersey Waste Management industry generally show a much higher level of intelligence, wit and humanity than people in our industry.

Every once in a while I come across intelligent behavior in the animal world that totally recreates for me some sense of what the visual effects industry, or the people within it, are like. For example, in this post, I discuss why the Komodo Dragon might make a good mascot for Visual Effects.

I have just stumbled upon another example of animal behavior that evokes for me the sense of the visual effects industry in some subtle, or even sublime, way.

In the past, I have often wondered if there might also be some relationship between visual effects people and the cartilanginous fish known as "stingrays". The stingray is related to the shark, and many have noted that visual effects people do share behavior with stocks, notably the need to always move forward and the tendency to go into a feeding frenzy whenever blood is sensed.

Who you looking at ?

One behavior that visual effects people seem to share with the stingray is in the area of mating. Here is how Wikipedia describes mating behavior in the stingray:

"When a male is courting a female, he will follow her closely, biting at her pectoral disc. He then places one of his two claspers into her valve."

This so clearly resembles mating behavior in visual effects people, to the extent that they mate, that one has to wonder if there is not a deeper genetic relationship between the two groups of animals.

Normally, the sting ray is a loner who travels and feeds by themselves and rarely seeing another of their kind but recently new behavior has been observed in the Cayman Islands. There, tourists have taken to feeding the stingray with prepackaged-for-their-convenience squid packets and the stingray have taken to the idea in a major way. Now instead of being nocturnal and alone, they hang around during the daytime in large crowds waiting to gorge themselves on tasty squid packets. Apparently there is no ethic or value that the stingray is not willing to give up in return for tasty frozen squid.

Consider the following picture of this practice:

You can read more about this here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/stingrays-adjust-their-behavior-in-response-to-feedings-from-tourists/2013/03/18/06358d5c-8125-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_singlePage.html?tid=obinsite

This reminds me of the feeding frenzy in visual effects and computer animation in the early 90s, with scum newly trained in art schools flocking into the artificial and unsustainable slave pits of the major studios on the West Coast, gorging themselves on tasty and competitive salary packages and leaving chunks and detrius from dead squid floating in little pieces in the water.

The relationship is surely not a coincidence.

The Stingray on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray

Grand Cayman Islands on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Islands

Reality vs Photography: The Case of the Flying Peacock

The following image was brought to my attention by Clark Anderson and has been making the rounds on the Internet.

 I looked at this image and immediately thought "fake", but after some research into it, I am pretty sure it is real, with some solid photographic help.

The peacock is the classic example in evolutionary circles of an out-of-control, positive-feedback loop in selection. Peahens like flashy peacocks and mate with them, resulting in more males with flash and more females who like males with flash. So it is believed.

It is also the case that the peafowl (as they are known to non-gender-biased zoologists) does not have many predators where they live, and the predators that they do have only eat them when they can not find anything else. Another helpful trait if you are going to have 2/3rds of your body mass invested in this huge dead weight on your ass.

But getting back to our photograph, what we have here is one in a series of photographs in India of a peacock who was jumping around that day in the presence of a persistent photographer who, with his trusty telephoto and probably image stabilized lens, was able to get a number of pictures when the peafowl was (very briefly) in flight.

So what I think you are seeing here is an unusual pose of the peacock in the process of leaping up, the foreshortening of the telephoto lens, and possibly the benefit of a camera that takes many photos as quickly as it can.   Either that or the photographer was remarkably quick and/or lucky to catch the pose that he or she did.   

Then, one of these photographs, which happened to catch a nearly full jump of the peacock, was cropped, color timed, and probably had contrast modified and some sharpening. Thus a very iconic and graphic image was created from an image of something that does exist in nature, although you are never likely to see it this way yourself, even if you lived near a flock of peacocks.  

Here is the original composition as photographed. 

Original image at http://i.imgur.com/q0ukH.jpg

It has never been the case, that photography simply recorded what was there in an objective and unmodified manner. Photographers have always added their own spin and point of view, but usually it results in something that is not quite so dramatically graphic.

Photorealism is a style of painting, not of photography.

Here is a photograph from the same series of photographs of our jumpy peacock as found on Wikipedia.

Here are nine pictures from the same series:

http://izismile.com/2011/10/24/beautiful_flying_peacock_9_pics.html

The Komodo Dragon as a Potential Mascot for the Field of Visual Effects

[Revised 12/11/2012]

The purpose of this post is to bring to your attention an example of a truly original behavior in an animal, in this case the Komodo Dragon.

I find animal behavior fascinating, and I have no doubt that animals are intelligent, even though scientists, or some scientists, claim that they are not sure.   I think most dogs are more intelligent than many people I know and they are certainly of a better character.

One reason this topic has come up, is because there has been a low level effort to find a mascot or symbol for the field of visual effects and computer animation in the motion picture industry.  A bulldog might symbolize determination, an eagle might symbolize vision and integrity, a zombie might indicate mindless devotion, and so forth.   After all, doctors have their snake, California has its bear, the Orioles have their bird, maybe we should have a mascot too.

Ideally any mascot chosen for visual effects would communicate something about the field and people in it, and not just be chosen because it is cute. A good mascot / totem might inspire us by their example and help stimulate an espirit de corps that could cut across the various competitive companies and encourage us to achieve excellence.

Recently, I came across an animal with a truly amazing behavior that has been observed in the wild, and I want to suggest it here as a possible candidate for our mascot.

A very cute Komodo Dragon taking a nap on a rock.

The Komodo Dragon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon) is the world's largest lizard. It lives in parts of Indonesia and it is famous for many things. It is famous for having a saliva that is so nasty that one bite and the victim will go away and die of the putrescence that comes from the bacteria in its drool.   The Komodo is famous for eating anything that moves, including its own children. The little Komodo Dragons apparently learn to climb trees to stay out of the way of their parents in case one of them should suddenly decide to want a snack.  

But there is one behavior above all others that distinguishes the Komodo from other animals. In order to understand the significance of this behavior we first have to go over the normal eating behavior of the Komodo.

The adult Komodo Dragon may eat no more than once a month. Its preferred meal is a small pig, goat or deer which it likes to eat whole, live, in its entirety, in one gulp. Basically they inhale dinner, or that is the idea. Then they will sit in the shade and digest for several weeks, up to a month, being careful not to get too hot.  When done digesting, he or she will vomit out the indigestible parts such as the skull and hooves and wipe the disgusting slime off its snout on a rock.

But often a piglet or appropriately sized dinner is not available so the Komodo inhales what it can of the available animal, and can get caught with an unhappy pig or goat in its mouth, half in and half out.  Obviously this won't do, so the Komodo has to figure out how to get the intended dinner all the way in.

How does it do this? Other predators might stun the intended victim with a venom that paralyzes the victim or makes it unconscious. Or it might want to kill the victim first, bite it into chunks, and then eat it a piece at a time.   But this is not what the Komodo Dragon does.  

What the Komodo does is to run at full speed with the pig/goat/deer in its mouth and slams that part of dinner still visible into a tree (or other large object) in order to bash it all the way in.  If dinner is not all the way in after the first bash, it will back up and charge at the tree repeatedly head first, or if you will, goat first, until the goat/pig/deer is completely inside.  

Komodo's have been observed knocking trees down in this way because of their enthusiasm.

What a creative approach!   What enthusiasm and ingenuity it demonstrates!  It reminded me at once of the enthusiasm and determination that a visual effects facility uses to get a project.   And of the same sort of compassion and genuineness with which someone in visual effects works with a co-worker and many, many other aspects of our field.  I still see the resemblance whenever I read about the Komodo Dragon, this one behavior completely recreates for me the sense of the deepest motivations of so many of our peers.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this to your attention in case people felt that this might be an appropriate mascot for visual effects.  

Wikipedia page for the Komodo Dragon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon

The Psychological Effects of Flare in Dr. Strangelove (1964)

One of my favorite things in the world is flare. I mean flare like you might find in photography, not "flair", which is also good, but something else. Flare is a lens aberration that comes from light reflecting off elements in a lens. I mean a REAL lens, not the fake lenses that one finds in computer animation or the fake lens flare programs people sell for photoshop. I mean the real flare that comes from real lenses, particularly older lenses, that comes from light being being deflected from where it should be going, to the emulsion or sensor, and instead bounces around inside the lens, willy nilly, going whereever it damn well pleases.

The type of flare I am talking about has several kinds of effects. One kind of effect is on the image (loss of contrast, washing out the blacks, causing halation or a glow around bright objects, etc). But it has another kind of effect as well, a wonderful effect. It has a cognitive effect, or if you prefer a psychological effect. We have learned that when you take a picture in bright sunlight, that the image will be washed out. We have learned that when you take a picture of a bright object, that there will be a distortion of some sort of the picture. We have learned to expect to see halos around lights in night photography. And because we have all learned this, and don't think about it anymore, we can use this to create in an image a different feeling or persuade you to think you see something that is not there.

So, if I am simulating a city at night, or an airplane at night with bright lights on it, then it is a standard approach to create a halo or some other artifact around each of the lights that are supposed to be bright. Back in the days when people did model photography, they would reshoot a scene with only the lights visible, everything else black, in order to get a "light pass" which could then be composited in. Think Bladerunner (1982) or Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). These kinds of effects are all throughout these two films. (The effects facility was the brilliant Entertainment Effects Group in the Marina, now long gone, and the work was supervised by Doug Trumbull and Richard Yuricich, both ASC.)

But there is one sequence of all that is my favorite use of flare. It is all through this sequence, a sequence that I consider one of the best in all of film, and no one ever notices. This is "the bomb run" from Dr. Strangelove which is six minutes long and is the last six minutes before the bomber drops an atomic bomb on a target in the former Soviet Union. It is the sequence where they run through the checklist for the bomb and try to get the bomb bay doors open. Among other things, it has a very young James Earl Jones in the role as bombadier ("Negative function, sir. Bomb bay doors do not open, sir").

Here are some images from this sequence.

There is flare in every one, and a lot more in the sequence itself. It is completely subliminal and I promise you that it is not accidental. I say that with such assurance because before Stanley Kubrick was a director he was a professional photographer in NYC. And no photographer is unaware of flare. Not a chance. This was deliberate and I think it adds to the atmosphere of the world inside the bomber.

What a shame that lens designers work so hard to remove flare from modern lenses. Progress, I guess.

There is an ok copy of the bomb run at the following link. The particular sequence I am referring to is from 3:00 into the clip to the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTo-iFBu14U&feature=related

Zeiss explains their T* anti-reflection coating in this youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtmQgoOZ3cw

An Example of the Genre of the Making of VIsual Effects Films

One of the weird phenomena that surrounds the tremendous "success" of visual effects, is the self-destructive documentary that describes how the effects are done as part of the publicity of the film, no matter how irrelevant the visual effects may be to that film. Whatever movie it may be, it has a documentary about how the visual effects were done. First the premise of the documentary is silly, the visual effects are anything but glamourous yet the documentary will almost always make them seem so.  Second, it is self-destructive because telling everyone how we do the work is like a magician revealing how the trick is done, it takes away the magic. How "special" will "special effects" be if everyone knows about how we do what we do? Third it is often lies, that is often not the way the effects were actually done. So that is good at least, you see we didn't tell everyone how we did the work, although we did tell them how we often do the work, just not that particular shot which was complicated and annoying and who would want to be bored with the actual details? Besides maybe the details of how that particular shot was done would reveal a mistake or maybe that bold new technology that we were using to sell the show didn't actually work all that well, and had to be augmented by animators and technical directors fixing every frame, and how much fun would that be to tell the movie-going audience who doesn't really care about the boring details anyway?

Fourth, anyone who knows the world of visual effects knows that it would be extremely unlikely for one of these documentaries to be in any way humorous, satirical, sarcastic or self-critical. Not in a 100,000,000 years. With a few exceptions, people in visual effects are deadly serious. Tell a joke, go to jail. Use a big word, they think you are making fun of them (seriously). At least in this country.

So it is to the UK that we must turn for the best commentary about visual effects I have seen in any media, and it is in the form of a mock documentary looking back at primitive visual effects as they were done at the end of the 20th century as part of a 2006 BBC show called Time Trumpet.

Did he really say working with actors is like "herding zombies"?  Oh my!

Avoiding annoying and unnecessary spillage of beer on the set.

Notice how they call a green screen stage a "CGI studio". I think it is somewhat funny that computer graphics has become so famous that people think that a standard visual effects technique is or must be "computer graphics". Nevertheless, this is one of the best satires I have seen about visual effects.

The documentary is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjhBf4vlTw0&list=PLPVUAquAnllvLn_lcO2BSuUoXwguvRtfS&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Information about Time Trumpet is at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Trumpet

Reality vs Visual Effects: The Case of the F-15 Over Afghanistan

I regularly stumble across pictures from the real world that look fake to me.   I believe that if this picture was used in a movie, that is if there was a scene that looked like this, people would complain about the bad and obviously fake visual effects.

Here is a picture of a fighter being refueled at night over Afghanistan.

Examine the picture (click on it to enlarge it) and then read my notes below.   These are the notes that I would give the technical director of the shot to help him or her understand what some of the problems are.

An F-15E Strike Eagle from the 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, refuels Dec. 12 during a combat mission. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon)

1. The camera seems to be in an improbable position.  But it isn't, this is a camera on the refueling aircraft, completely normal.

2. The background (terrain) looks overly simple, it needs more detail.   That's how a lot of Afghanistan looks in winter at night.

3. The motion blur looks wrong.   But it isn't, the background is blurred because we are travelling fast over the ground, the airplane is not blurred because it has matched our speed.  The camera is at an oblique angle and the ground closer to the bottom of the picture is travelling "faster", e.g. more screen distance vertically, than the terrain in the upper part of the picture, hence the motion blur in the bottom of the picture is visibly more than the blur near the top, and this is correct.

4. You can see inside the cockpit.  That is correct, very high visibility these cockpits. And lots of illumination from the refueling boom.

5. The fighter itself is too low detail.  It looks like a model.   But it isn't.  F15s look like that from this point of view.  If you got up close you would see more detail, but it is deliberately supposed to be a sortof even grey from a distance (its a form of camouflage).

6. There appears to be a matte line around the front of the aircraft.   Yes there does appear to be a matte line, but it isn't.  It is the dark sky reflecting in the metal of the nose as it curves down.   It just looks like it has been outlined.

7. The lighting looks weird.   Its not your imagination, the lighting is weird.  We have a refueling boom with some sort of really bright (sodium?) light on it, a very bright moon illuminating everything with a blue-white light, reflections from the moon off the ground, illumination inside the fighter.  This is weird lighting.   That's just the way it is, or was, that night over Afghanistan.

In fact, it is a picture of a fighter at night over Afghanistan in winter being refueled.  It looks like that.   I think this is very amusing.

The original picture is at
http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/military_photos_20121106215639.aspx

Visual Effects and Subjective Reality in Barton Fink (1991)

This is a spoiler alert for the Coen Brothers film, Barton Fink (1991).

Visual effects are usually used in a very simple way conceptually, to show the audience something that would be hard to film, or expensive to film, or impossible to film, or just inconvenient to film. But generally the idea that is intended for the audience is that what you see is what you get, e.g. what you see is supposedly what happened.

If the story is simple, by definition the visual effects are almost certainly simple.  If the story has many levels or ambiguity or an "unreliable narrator", then there is an opportunity for visual effects to contribute to the film in a more interesting, at least conceptually, fashion.

Visual effects could, for example, show us what the character is feeling, or if the character is insane, what he is seeing.     It is not "photo realism", that hated and evil term of art, but maybe it is "subjective realism".

The best example I know of this, and one of my favorite uses of effects in any project, is the climax of the film Barton Fink (1991). This is a spoiler alert, read no further if you don't want to know.

It is a plot point of the film Barton Fink that whenever Charlie the insurance salesman (John Goodman) is around, it is very hot. The temperature is hot, so hot that the wallpaper peels off the hotel room walls. When Charlie is not around, the temperature returns to normal.   The heat and Charlie are in some way associated with each other.

Charlie, who is portrayed in the film as a prototypical "every man" is,  it turns out, a psychopath as well as an insurance salesman, whose trademark signature is to cut off the victim's head and leave the body.

The climax of the film occurs when two police detectives arrest Fink at his hotel because they believe that he is an accomplice and handcuff him to the metal frame bed in his hotel room. Charlie (aka Mad Man Mundt) has returned to "save the day" in a manner of speaking, and we know this because the temperature at the hotel starts rising.

Put down the policy case, Mundt, and put your mitts in the air.

The police detectives go out into the hallway to confront Mundt but when Mundt appears this time we can see what he sees: and what we see is that Charlie is in hell. And it is hot because wherever Charlie is there are flames burning all around him, in this case from the walls, even though the flames do not consume anything, e.g. the hotel does not burn down.

This is one of John Goodman's best performances.  This scene, and the one that follows, in which he explains his actions to Bart is spectacular.

One of the structural problems with visual effects in filmmaking is almost a tautology: visual effects are there to serve the story, but if the story is banal then the effects are banal as well, generally speaking. This is one of the best uses I know where visual effects are used to illustrate the subjective world of the character in a way that is spectacular and yet completely appropriate.

Its dramatic, its poetic, its intelligent,  and it is really well thought out.  How unusual.   

Now we return to the world of giant robots beating each other up and things exploding, the normal world of visual effects.

Barton Fink at IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101410/